Gender Bias in Psychology

Gender Bias in Psychology b) Discuss issues of gender bias in psychological research (22m)Mustin and Marecek (1988) identified 2 types of gender bias. Alpha bias refers to theories thatacknowledge real and enduring differences between men and women. These can heighten the valueof women, making findings from research misleading. For example, Lombroso's theory of criminalitystated that female criminal were rare because they had "evolved less than men due to the inactivenature of their lives". Lombroso believed that women lacked the intelligence and initiative tobecome a criminal. In accordance with such claims as these, the FBI's profiling technique didn'tinterview any female serial killers when gathering its evidence, and as a result a number of femaleoffenders may escape capture as none of the profilers considered that the offenders may befemale. However, it could be argued that it wasn't the profiling approach that was gender biased,but it was the result of the patriarchal society in America at the time the approach was developed.Beta Bias on the other hand, refers to theories that minimise the differences between men andwomen, assuming that women and men are the same, thus important parts of female lifeexperiences are often ignored. For example, Kohlberg's theory of moral reasoning was criticisedbecause the dilemma he used to assess moral reasoning were based on male perspectives, and heused a purely male sample, but then applied his theory to all, believing there were no genderdifferences in moral reasoning. As a result, Kohlberg encouraged Gilligan to develop her theory ofmoral understanding, using both males and females, which concluded that gender differences didexist in moral reasoning, in that men tend to base judgement on justice, whereas women tended tobase judgements on relationships and caring. However, the problem with this is that althoughGilligan tried to correct the methodological weakness of Kohlberg's research, all she actually did wasto create an alpha bias, promoting the already well established stereotype that men are more`rational' thinkers then `emotional' women.One cause of gender bias is due to stereotypical views of practitioners, which can be particular seenin the diagnosis of mental illness. For example, Leeson and Gray argued that mental healthprofessionals' attitudes towards women are based on the general stereotypical views of women insociety and this is reflected in their diagnosis. Male psychiatrists are more likely to diagnose femaleswith depression, even when they are presenting the same symptoms. Equally, Penfold and Walkergo on to state that women's complaints tend to be seen as having psychogenic origin, whilst men'sare seen as being caused by a physical problem. However, evidence has shown that disorders whichare typically seen as `female syndromes' are highly correlated with gender specific risk factors. Forexample, PTSD is much more common in women than men, but women are more likely to be suffersof sexual violence, for which PTSD is often a result. Therefore it may be the lifestyles of genders thatmake them prone to certain disorders.In conclusion it appears that psychological research is full of cases of gender bias, which many earlytheories showing either alpha or beta biases in their methods. However, early theories should not bediscounted even if the method was flawed as most make an important contribution to psychology.Ian Duffy